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The Russian Version of WWII

Russian version of WWII

In the foreword, Brian Holmes, a professor, mentions how this book is a critique of how oversimplified the events were. The American and British educated people faced a similar critique. He mentioned the way to avoid an approach based on nationalism is to be presented with multiple perspectives.

The introduction points out there is no one “right” perspective and a lot of the other perspectives have a lot of anti-Russian bias. The way this narrative is told provides a lot of details through descriptions of what happened. There was a lot of information left out about campaigns in 1944 because they favored the Soviet Union. They try to form a logical coherent narrative. Most of the edits from the original come from changing the order to limit needless repetition.

This is a book that teaches the history so the language used is going to be catered towards the general public. The book also emphasizes the Great Patriotic War, which was a cataclysmic event in the history of the Soviet Union. This deeply affected the citizens who lived through it and created generational trauma. This was pasted down and led to the distrust of the West.

In the discussion we got the chance to think about when moments in history become history. The talking points of WWII are starting to change because the people talking about it were those who never experienced it directly. Those who did are well into their 90s and are dying off.

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The Turner Diaries

“A Bible of the Racist Right”

The Turner Diaries are a detailed and continuous record of struggle during and before the revolution. Because these are daily accounts and the person recording the information is a part of the main group “The Organization”, this is meant to be seen as a reliable account of what happens. In 1978, William Luther Pierce used a pen name, Andrew MacDonald, to write the book. He also founded the National Alliance, which was a white supremacist group. This book inspired acts of terrorism like the Oklahoma City bombing and the point of the book was to further radicalize people who were already held right wing beliefs. This was in no way meant to convince others to join the cause.

In the book, black people (and people of color in general), plus Jewish people were seen as inferior. They often reference “the Great One” multiple times throughout the book and this is often interpreted as being Hitler himself. Anyone not fully committed to the cause of eliminating people of color, would also be executed. There is a quote that goes, “making it… hate crime for white people to defend themselves when crimes are committed against them by a non-white person.” This is meant to signify “what if the roles were reversed” but I don’t think they have the same standing. This doesn’t account for the power being held by white people for centuries while also establishing oppressive systems. For the book trying to further radicalize people, this analysis is irrelevant. The only important thing is the initial reaction of hatred.

This book also overtly establishes ethic cleaning and genocide. The main plot point of the book is the “the Organization” eventually gains enough power to kill every person of color and kill white people who associate with them because they are seen as “less pure”, which is also known as the “Day of the Rope”. Eventually, their influence would reach global measures and only white people would live on the Earth.

Amazon had only an e-copy version available on their website but after the January 6th insurrection, they decided to permanently remove it from their shelves to not cause further violence.

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Industrial Society and It's Future

Ted Kaczynski’s Manifesto

The way I chose to read this was to read the introduction and read the headings that I thought were interesting. Some of the things that I thought he was describing leftist ideas but I realized he was critical of leftists. Ted Kaczynski claims to not have political intentions but a lot of his critiques have systemic and inherently political roots.

I found it interesting how he mentioned overthrowing the government, but not economically instead by technological bases in society. His investment in listing many issues in society then not wanting to get involved politically is confusing. We are deep into late stage capitalism and a lot of the economic and technological basics are connected with the government. It’s hard to disconnect the two. Some of the points he seems to be angry at are the ones that have some connection to capitalism.

I also decided to take notes on specific sections of his manifesto like Sources for social problems and Disruption of power. He writes about people being forced to live under different structures form evolution, technological society has to weaken families, and in order for ties and local communities to function effectively, there needs to be a loyalty towards a system first. He also mentions being forced to live in a crowded area is not a good time, and doesn’t let you go through the power process, which allows people to find meaning in their own lives. Sounds like he’s on his way to critiquing the development of suburban areas, which came alongside the industrialization period. Suburban areas created isolation and led to the dependability of cars. He always seems to blame the people making their limited choices and not the systems that led them to their limited options.

For the section Distribution of Power, Kaczynski views obedience as having to do a little bit of effort just because you don’t have autonomy over what you choose to do. This doesn’t mean that the work you are putting into a job is easy/ isn’t hard work. This reminds me of the argument that when we move to socialism, the people are going to become lazy and do not want to work anymore. People are still going to have goals, hobbies, and interests that they are going to work towards. These efforts don’t mean less just because they aren’t getting paid for it. This only ensures they don’t have to worry about when their next meal is going to be or if rent is going to be paid.

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The SCUM Manifesto

Thoughts/ Context

In the 1960s, around the time the SCUM manifesto was becoming more popular, feminist focused on having equal pay for equal work, ending domestic violence, reducing severe limits on women in managerial jobs, ending sexual harassment, and having equal responsibility in the household.

Radical feminism focused on similar aspects but took things a step further but protesting racial equality over the struggle of women’s rights, including abortion rights, wanting equal rights amendment, accessing credit, and having equal pay.

The SCUM manifesto was written by Valerie Solamis. Besides her writing she is most famous for shooting Andy Warhol. He called a play she wanted to publish “distasteful” and misplaced it preventing further production or replication. The manifesto was published in many different languages. The availability became more accessible and let the message spread.

One of my main criticisms comes from when Valerie discusses her thoughts about men. There is a valid criticism of men upholding dynamics/ systems of power that negatively affect women and others. What that statement doesn’t consider is how capitalism and patriarchy play a role in behavior and what biases men may have. I think she is trying to say that because men are in control, they are the reason we have capitalism and a toxic patriarchy. Her criticisms would be better expressed by saying the reason why men act this way: being emotionless and greedy is because of capitalism and patriarchy.

Other instances to criticize capitalism is when she discusses men always wanting more power which they get by means of control. Capitalism has forced us to think working constantly and needing to be constantly productive is normal. We could work 2-3 hours a week and have the same productivity or more. This argument isn’t given to disrupt capitalism but to men.

She also describes women who act nice with men are a problem to society too. Valerie describes this is because they are in kahoots with men but her bigger issue is with women who are willing to conform to societal standards. The standards before the counter culture movement being upholding patriarchy and seeing women being less than men.

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Anarchist Cookbook

Context

The Anarchist Cookbook was written by William Powell as a teenager during the time where counterculture was becoming popular. He specified that this book wasn’t a call to action and only wanted it to be used as an instructional guide to build bombs and make drugs. Although many argue about the accuracy of the recipes, the FBI made a public statement denouncing the book.

The Anarchist cookbook was dropped from its first publishing company for “having no social purpose” and was the only book dropped that year. It was later revived in 2002 from a banned books company in Arkansas. William Powell himself wanted the book removed from circulation because he no longer believed the values he was preaching.

Anarchy is usually associated with violence and a lack/hatred of authority. The Anarchist Cookbook has Anarchist in the name so many associate the book with having Anarchist values. The Anarchist Collective Group devalued the information in the book because it didn’t represent what the cause stood for.

Today, many people who have been in possession of the book have been charged with crimes of terrorism. Other crimes also include being involved with mass bombings and school shooters.

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Movies Watched Together

Jesus Christ Superstar

One of the first connections I made while I watched was the similarities with the Gospel of Mary. Judas doesn’t think that Mary is good enough to be this touchy with Jesus. There are also references to her “reputation” of being a prostitute.

Similar to the Gospel of Judas, Jesus can be portrayed as angry and not nice all the time. A primary example is shown early in the movie when Jesus is yelling at Judas for talking about Mary in a rude way and Jesus knocking over all the tables set up in the market because it was supposed to be used as a place of worship.

Another aspect similar to the Gospel of Judas is portrayed as not wanting to kill Jesus and having remorse for his actions. Making him have more character and getting to learn more about what led up to Jesus’ killing humanizes Judas more. This makes him have more nuance and leads away from the narrative that Judas wanted to kill just because.

Judas is also shown to be critical of Jesus because of his focus of the people liking him instead of helping them. As someone who is often portrayed as being selfless and gives everything to help the people, being shown as only caring about his legacy shows Jesus in a light not many people are going to be willing to accept. Especially since Jesus is also shown whining about how no one is going to remember him.

There are also moments where Jesus seems to go against his morals by saying that there is nothing they can do to help the poor. He views his followers as being mindless because no matter what he says, they will follow him. This only lasts until the people decide they will follow the parts they think are acceptable.

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Mein Kampf

Thoughts for Ch. 2-6

Hitler’s views at first seemed like they were consistent and then suddenly switched up into a totally different viewpoint. 

There were so many instances where he was so close to becoming a socialist or even a communist because of his experiences with being poor and struggling to find a job.There were also moments where he would notice the extreme wealth disparities in Vienna. He also noticed no matter how good of a skilled worker you were, there was still a chance for you to fall to rock bottom and fall back into poverty. This would have been the driving force if his hatred for Jewish people wasn’t to the extreme and reinforced by society. Considering how many people today see his views as extreme it was surprising to see how he thought the terms: seizing the means of production and wage theft were too extreme for him. At first he tried to stay away from politics and had centrist ideas. Slowly became more and more reactionary due to him being able to be easily influenced by these ideals. 

Around page 37, he describes arguing with his construction colleagues about what his stances were. In the footnotes, they also mention how he most likely wasn’t working in construction to begin with. He was talking about how their ideas were too radical when mentioning that they need to seize the means of production. The only thing that they did was talk about how the structures put in place, the ones that he already had a personal gripe with, into terms of how to solve some of those issues. 

He also says how he is against hierarchies (class ones) because of how differently they were treated. Then he decides it is better to create a class system involving how pure of German he thought they were.

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The Original Bambi

Bambi: The Book

I knew there would be some gore elements when I first started reading. Although there are definitely some scenes that the audience should be wary of, especially those involving the hunter, the story doesn’t stand out to me as forbidden. It could be because I have had to read a lot of books with violence and many metaphorical aspects recently that this is just another in the list.

One thing that was made clear was that this book was not made for children. This feels like another instance correlation does not equal causation. Telling stories using animals is often used to teach children, but not all stories with animals should be used to teach children. There are multiple scenes that involve knowing the undertones of what is really happening and understanding the significance of why the characters act the way they do. There are also some scenes that describe blood and although it’s not something parents won’t want their kids to see, kids would be able to understand.

I appreciate how there could be multiple interpretations to the metaphors with a wide set of interpretations. At first the narrative seemed like it was only leading in one direction but it was still able to branch out and left the ending ambiguous.

When watching the movie I got frustrated with how Bambi doesn’t know what kind of danger he’s in. There were many instances when Bambi doesn’t know the kind of privilege he has and what dangers the other animals have to face. Bambi himself is prey but the only predator he has to worry about is the same one the whole forest has to worry about. This topic is brought up in more detail in the book. It gives Bambi a chance to be a more fleshed out character, to grow up, which leads him to become more isolated.

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Mein Kampf

Connections

One of the first things I noticed while reading chapter 6 was how similar the points of spreading propaganda were to how to pick a topic for a paper. The main point being how the topic needs to be specific enough to be unique but have a broad application. This makes the message memorable but in Hitler’s point, it slowly turns into insanity and relies on the people being in a vulnerable state. For both points to work, they need to reflect back on the original message.

Another thing that was surprising to me was how “leftist” his ideas sounded at first. He would dictate his experiences with poverty and notice the extreme wealth disparities in Vienna. The problem started the moment he decided not everyone should be included in his better society for Germany. Regardless of whether he was implementing leftist ideals, if it doesn’t include everyone, then the movement isn’t leftist.

In the introduction of the book, around page xxxiv, he lists 4 ways of dealing with the increment of the German population: abolish birth control, internal colonisation, acquisition of new territory, and expanding industry and commerce to buy food from abroad. This sentence looked like something I could expand on but with the phrasing and the wording, it was hard for me to understand.

One of the phrases I did understand was a quote from page 29, “Let us not try to condone this by saying that it is no better in other countries.” This sounds like a rebuttal to a common phrase said in the US, “If you don’t like it here then why don’t you leave?” Accepting the bare minimum from what a government should be doing isn’t gonna do it anymore. Critiquing systems put into place to oppress minorities should be expected and not seen as treacherous to want to find ways to improve the conditions of everyone.

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Movies Watched Together

Bambi: the Movie

Before we watched the movie all together, I never had the chance to see it before. I wasn’t really exposed to old timey animation from Disney so I didn’t know what to expect.

In a very Disney fashion, Bambi was portrayed as being very clumsy and childish while the community of animals living in the forest is very supportive. The non verbal communication showed itself in the form of music. Even the slightest change in Bambi’s mood was expressed in the music. The changes in light hearted up beat tunes to sudden dark tones kept me interested. I also liked how the background also aided in foreshadowing by slowly shifting to darker/ cool colors when the storm was coming.

Although this is discussed in the book in further detail, it was frustrating to see Bambi’s mom not explain the danger he was in. By keeping Bambi in the dark, she puts Bambi in more danger because she can’t always control the circumstances of an emergency. Deciding whether or not someone is old enough to learn about the dangers they could potentially face is a sign of privilege. Which the movie tries to incorporate, but since there are many details from the original source that weren’t included, the reference falls flat.

One of the moments in the movie that caught my attention was the scene where Bambi is fighting with another male deer that tries to take away Faline from Bambi. What was first a watercolor background with calm colors becomes dark with flashing bright colors when they bump antlers. The aggression was emphasized with the music being loud and sudden.

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